President Donald Trump signed a major Dodd-Frank rollback into law Thursday, hoping to bring regulatory relief to community banks across the U.S. The president explained Dodd-Frank’s costly regulations gave large banks a negative advantage at the cost of small banks throughout the country. Click the headline to read more.

Valuations

Homeowners are growing closer to estimating their home’s appraised value. This closing gap may be due to home prices increasing faster than homeowners can keep up with. In one region of the U.S., home prices jumped a full 9.99% from last year.

When commissioning an appraisal, do AMCs provide a better valuation to mortgage lenders? The FHFA says no and AMCs are not happy: "Our review of the research has uncovered real concerns about the methodology, measures of quality, errors and the insertion of staff opinion that seems to indicate bias."

It’s no secret that affordable housing continues to be more difficult to find, and competition among first-time homebuyers continues to remain fierce. Here’s what some cities are doing to overcome the crisis. But homebuyers seem undeterred.

Home prices continue to surge, rising for their seventh consecutive month in February. And growth in the Western states was even higher, breaking double-digit increases in home prices. However, CoreLogic’s latest report shows these surges in home prices will soon see a slowdown.

Tappable equity surged to its highest dollar amount on record, far surpassing its previous 2005 peak. Black Knight explained as home prices continued their upward trajectory at the national level, the amount of tappable equity available to homeowners with mortgages continued to rise as well.

Private equity firm Narrow Gauge Capital announced it has acquired Class Appraisal, a valuations and appraisal management solutions provider. “We have made great progress over the past several years and are excited to work with Narrow Gauge to enhance our market-leading position,” said Jon Tallinger, Class Appraisal's vice president of sales and marketing.

The latest Case-Shiller report showed home prices are continuing to rise, but now experts say not only are those high prices here to stay, but homebuyers could be pummeled this spring by an increase in competition. Homebuyers will face not only the typical spring competition, but also the pent-up demand from would-be buyers who have been looking for, but unable to find, a home the past several months.

Home prices increased in all top 20 U.S. cities, with the highest annual gains seen in Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco. However, despite the continually rising home prices, the Case-Shiller report explained affordability is not a concern.

Last week readers of LendingLife got a first look at the Veros, Valligent partnership promising to cut mortgage lending cost.
In that article, it's written that a big part of that cost savings would be taking the legwork out of valuations.
More importantly, the news set off some responses from LendingLife readers, not just on the partnership, but on the state of the valuations industry as a whole.

The Bay Area continues to see homes fly off the market even amid rapidly rising home prices. Not only does the median home price continue to increase, but the number of homes that sold for $1 million or more this February rose about 33% year over year, to a record high level.

This month inHousingWire magazine

He wears t-shirts to his televised interviews; not very CEO. He played sports at a high level, but rarely brings it up and when he does he talks about it as a mere chapter in his life. Honestly, who plays a Super Bowl and doesn’t describe it as the defining moment in their personal journey? Casey Crawford, that’s who. His family is a big part of his life of course, but he talks about his even larger family — his coworkers — in terms that are just as glowing.

Feature

One of the things that has bedeviled mortgage financing post-crisis has been the absence of the private label mortgage backed securities market. During the peak years, private label MBS issuance topped $1 trillion. In 2017, only $70 billion of private label RMBS were issued, although that is a big increase from 2016.

Commentary

Digital technology has disrupted businesses and industries from publishing to public transportation, so can the mortgage industry be far behind? Actually, anyone who’s applied for a mortgage recently will have recognized that things are already changing fast.